Based upon several extended interviews with John Cohen as well as other historical materials, the article examines Cohen's friendship with Halcomb and his relationship to Halcomb's personal life and musical career, with special attention to the production and reception of The High Lonesome Sound. Through Cohen's lens and microphone, poverty becomes not a burden but a precondition for beauty, a signifier of pure, powerful folk expression, of authenticity. From your friend, Roscoe." New York Times, September 22, 1991, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEED61031F931A1575AC0A967958260 jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1520_81').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1520_81', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'bottom center', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Cohen returned to Hazard, Kentucky to present the film at the local library. Cohen left more certain than ever, that "Roscoe's music wasn't much appreciated in this locale." (If it wasn't for the fact that something worthwhile might come out of this, something that will cause people to look with open eyes — and open their hearts to sounds other than those they already know — then I would never want to put myself in such a situation. She remembered Halcomb as one of the "'good old boys'" whom she occasionally saw "making music at square dances and set-runnings around the community." Cohen pulled up and recognized a young man named Odabe Halcomb he had recorded the night before at a nearby roadhouse. Cohen, however, emphasized the poverty in Halcomb's life, not as a personal burden that took a toll on his physical and mental well-being, though Cohen certainly recognized this, but as an abstract force that gave the older musician's music its power, its "edge. When Cohen first arrived at Halcomb's house, he recorded "Across the Rocky Mountain," then played it back for Halcomb to sing with while he filmed. Agee imagined the image coming to Yeats from the common practice in the English countryside of drowning kittens with a sack weighted with stones. He completed his dissertation, Up Against the World Like It Is': Documentary Expression in the South, 1925 - 1965, in May 2008 at the University of Virginia. There is no truth except that which we make for ourselves. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982. He's got a high lonesome sound in his voice and when my brother-in-law, John Cohen, decided more people should know about this singer, he went down to Kentucky and made a movie of him and he called his movie, The High Lonesome Sound." "64Cohen interview. Cohen countered these images through documentary realism, depicting the diversity and vitality of eastern Kentucky's cultural life while revealing the poverty that an exploitative mining economy created. In 1948, at the age of sixteen, John Cohen first heard Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads at summer camp at a site called Turkey Point, north of New York City. Dwight Yoakam. Cash's 1941 The Mind of the South, a book that was hardly relevant to life in Appalachia. On romanticism's rejection of universal truths and absolutes see Isaiah Berlin, Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff, "The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions,". John Cohen, "Conversations with Bob Dylan," Sing Out!, Vol. That film featured wonderful footage of Woody Guthrie and Texas Gladden but, in Cunningham's words, "it was marred by its tight structure." Some of the most intense revivalists, those most committed to embracing and understanding the roots, styles, and aesthetics of American folk music, maintained a level of interest and commitment that extended beyond participating in group folk sings, festivals, or hootenannies. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1520_57').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1520_57', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'bottom center', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); The distinction between Cohen's work and 1930s photography that Deshin alludes to here is tied to the influence of such photographers as Robert Frank and Helen Levitt on Cohen's vision and his seemingly more apolitical motives compared to Farm Security Administration photographers working for the Roosevelt administration. Folklorist D.K. "It has been a hard time here in Kentucky and I just don't know how much I have accomplished." . Fears of a hillbilly invasion combined with the discovery of Appalachia as an aberrant "pocket of poverty" to produce a mix of anxiety and wonder towards southern highlanders. The documentary form, whether in writing, photography, film, or sound recording provides a way to preserve aspects and images of folk culture before they disappear. He describes labor tensions in the local mines and mentions other means of making a living. He recalled driving with old-time musician Willie Chapman over to Hyden in neighboring Leslie County. Cut out the face-to-face time, let’s get down to the dollars and sense, blub blub blub… I need a cheeseburger to go no pickle, no ketchup. I learned of another spelling of his name while visiting Halcomb's friends and relatives in his native Perry County, Kentucky during the summer of 2006. Henry Shapiro and Allen Batteau among others have demonstrated how fiction writers beginning in the 1870s created the enduring myth of isolation and "otherness." Dir. "41John Cohen to Ross Grosman, second letter, June 1959. The photograph conveys entrapment in poverty, passed to a new generation. Though not directly influenced by the Lomaxes, Cohen's own promotion of Halcomb fits into the broader cultural trend identified by Filene. Their destination was the home of an old fiddler whom Cohen wanted to photograph and record. When Cohen arrived at Cornett's house for the first time he brought along two familiar UMW officials. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1520_71').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1520_71', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'bottom center', relative: true, offset: [10, 10], }); Kentucky mountain music may have been the film's ostensible focus, but Halcomb's presence, though limited, provided its human face. Listeners heard Child ballads alongside more recent banjo and guitar tunes, some influenced by the blues. Leaving from Huntington, West Virginia, a traveler passed "ramshackle cabins, swinging footbridges extending to similar cabins on the other side, abandoned carcasses of Fords and Chevrolets, piles of garbage on the riverbank, and black-faced coal-diggers crawling out of dog-hole mines. 'That High Lonesome Sound" also corresponds to a multimedia collection of the same name, where videos of these artists working their bluegrass mojo can be seen. "On one hand," he said, "when you get to a new place everything is exciting but at the same time everything is potentially dangerous." Suddenly she announced, "Here comes Rossie!". A San Francisco Chronicle reviewer declared Mountain Music of Kentucky "one of the greatest records in the entire literature of American folk song” and Halcomb as "a true genius of the white blues and Anglo-American ballad. He was tolerated, but there was little feeling for his music, which was met with indifference or scorn." Share this. Cornett possessed a unique banjo style replete with odd phrasings and tunings. Cohen used the money he had made from Life to finance his first trip to Kentucky during the late spring and summer of 1959. . Aginsky Productions, 1980. The technological limitations of Cohen's equipment meant that he could not get Halcomb's recorded monologue in sync with the filming. At about the same time, television shows such as The Real McCoys, The Andy Griffith Show, and The Beverly Hillbillies played a significant role in shaping public perceptions and stereotypes about southern mountain people. , '' Sing Out!, Vol to Asch desperately hungry for a,. Has been a hard time here in person to present his music, '' Sing Out!, Vol for... Putnam Valley, New York, September 1-2, 2006 Cohen. paltry compensation the! Coming Out are very important Depression was an Old Regular Baptists: lined-out Hymnody southeastern... Out as to be profoundly shaped by their time James Blue, went on to make the High Sound. 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